The Zmagar Diaries - Moscow Metalists Declare War in Minsk

I was dragged to a metal concert in Minsk. I didn’t have a good time. I am a survivor and this is my story.

My harrowing adventure occurred a year after the Zmagar protests of 2020 that almost took out Lukashenko and put a trio of gross mammies in charge of the country in his place.

Old man Luka came very close to ending up like Yanukovitch, forced to flee the country and to live out the rest of his life in shame and something resembling a soft house arrest. But this old man was no Yanukovich. He sacked up, loaded his AK, rode in on a heli with his son and rallied the troops to put down the coup.

I know that we haven’t talked much about Belarus on this blog and that is a crying shame. Lukashenko’s rule is worth discussing, as are the events surrounding the attempted color revolution against him. I’ll get around to it someday, I promise.

But a lot of the themes that I’ve brought up in posts explaining the political, age and ideological divides within Russia and Ukraine are applicable to the situation in Belarus.

It should all start to sound depressingly familiar at this point.

The proles: out-of-touch sovok old-timers, middle-aged hustlers obsessed with the West and retarded millennial smartphone zombiers - all of them at each others’ throats for one reason or another.

The ruling class: remnants of the old Soviet elite, new captains of industry that the 90s produced, and the perennial secret police.

This isn’t a post about Belarus proper so that’s all we’ll say on the topic for now.

MetalHeads are actually some of the nicest people you will meet as far as musical subcultures go. I’ve never had any problems with them and the scene is overwhelmingly huwhyte for some reason or another, which is a much appreciated bonus.

Heavy metal has changed quite a bit since the heyday of Metallica though, and it’s a stretch to even call the genre music at this point. The guttural screaming was always part of the whole thing, but it wasn’t the whole thing, if you catch my drift. It went from 80% music and 20% guttural screaming to about 100% guttural screaming at some point. On some level, this kind of over-specialization occurs in all art forms and I’m not singling out heavy metal here because you see this reductio ad absurdum-ing trend across the board.

Metal was quite a hit in the Slavlands and remains somewhat relevant today, but can’t boast anywhere near the popularity it enjoyed back in the good old days.

Music, generally, is considered pro-Western in the Slavlands.

…

You know, I cracked up a bit writing that last line. Lol. Give me a second to collect myself here haha. Writing about Slavs and their comings and goings just makes me shake my head and laugh uncontrollably sometimes. God bless ‘em. Slavs really are ridiculous. You either laugh or you end up doing this:

Anyways.

Listening to Western music and getting really into it is a political statement over here. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Western music enthusiast here who isn’t a pro-Western imbecile who enjoys protesting the government in his free time.

My friend casually dropped that I was an American (I guess I am, no point fighting it) and I got mobbed by the fans. I got more attention than the band members who stepped out to smoke after their set was finished, which was kind of funny, I guess.

Naturally, as always happens when you let drop that you’re an American, (which is why I avoid ever mentioning it) the urban youfs all line up to tell you about how much they hate their country and how they want to move to America. As it turns out, the metal scene believes that it has been heavily oppressed following the protests. I asked why this was and they explained that the government was suspicious of them and their intentions and unfairly put pressure on local venues to not allow them to throw their concerts.

Me: So wait, are you anti-Lukashenko?

Them: Yes, we went out into the streets and called for his overthrow.

Lol. Ah here I go again. I’m never going to finish this article hahahaha.

You try to overthrow a guy and then you get all huffy that he and his people aren’t very happy with you? Bitch, you threw the first punch and now you mad? Cause and effect, anyone? You’re mad at someone being brutal and drowning the streets in blood?I thought I was at a heavy metal concert, hello!?

Ah, but, according to these Zmagars, in the West, we enjoy total political freedom and if we went out to protest our government, we would not provoke the ire of our government in retaliation. Yeah:

Yes, they have some bizarro, totally unrealistic ideal that they measure their own government up against and that is how they justify their hypocritical self-serving positions.

They started getting emotional about their vendetta against Lukashenko and, eventually, they let slip that, really this is all about their hatred of Russia and all that Russia represents. Apparently, the time was soon approaching when Minsk would take up arms against the oppressive regimes of Luka and Putin. They declared that they were ready to fight the hordes of Mordor - just give them the order! And, seeing as they wouldn’t listen when I said that the West was just as oppressive to its political dissidents as the East, I had to devise a thought experiment to get my point across to them.

Me: You say you’re oppressed, but here you are speaking openly about your plans to violently overthrow the government. You don’t know me and you don’t know half the people here. If you were truly afraid of repression, would you be so casually and openly saying such things? Here? Literally in the center of Minsk?

They ignored me. Pearls meet swine. Par for the course, really.

Then I asked them if they believed that other Belarussians thought the same way as they did. I was leading them on with questions I knew the answers to at this point. I’ve seen the Levada center polls and I know that the vast majority of people support Lukashenko and that the rebels don’t like being reminded of that. Pro-Luka people don’t live in the nice parts of Grodno or Minsk and they don’t go to metal concerts, so these guys live in an echo chamber. But, countries are comprised of millions of people, not just your urban friend circle and, as a rule, 80-something percent of the peasantry supports the strongman Authoritarian leader regardless of what country we’re talking about. Drill that axiom into your skull if you find yourself living stuck behind enemy lines in a libtard city. It helps you stay sane. Furthermore, urban middle and upper class bugmen and their brat children do not represent the majority of any country and are generally hated and despised.

Anyways, they shrugged and said that these people didn’t matter, really, because even if loyalists are the majority, they are simply stupid and uniformed and not worth taking seriously. All the bumpkins need is their kasha and a stable income and they don’t care about fighting for grand political ideas, which makes them bad people.

I asked them if they themselves were Minsk born and raised. They replied that they were all mostly from Moscow and had moved over recently.

I immediately looked over at the drummer with an expectant look on my face - I was sure that he’d do a bud-um-tss on cue, but I was sorely disappointed. He didn’t realize how funny it was that to hear that these anti-Russia crusaders were rich kids who had come from Moscow to preach to the the backwards Belarussians about the need to rise up against the yoke of Russia. Instead I had to settle for looking at them like this:

Minsk is a nice city, as is St. Petersburg, Kiev, the center of Moscow and so on. In fact, the views and political beliefs of the people who inhabit the good parts of these cities is virtually identical. I feel like I’m writing the same article over and over again and it’s really just a form of self-therapy at this point.

If nuclear war were declared, I’d be willing to sacrifice all of these cities as long as the “people” who live in them were to be burned up as well. In exchange, I’m sure that Russia would be willing to help our Western brothers out by taking out Paris, Berlin, London, New York, DC, San Fran and so on.

The Urbanus Liberali rat breed makes its nest in big cities and the top scientists have concluded that the only way to rid the country of infestation is to nuke these urban centers into oblivion.

I’m sorry. I’d rather not do it this way. It *ugh* it sucks, I know. But we have to follow the science, folks. We gotta burn these rats out once and for all before we can build back something better. Yes, the Science has spoken and the Science is pretty gnarly.

MetalHead problems require really fucking metal solutions.